I’ve spent the last few days doing lots of fascinating ActionScript memory-tests – and hopefully I’ll post some of the results here if I get time – but while I have a quick moment I thought I’d share this finding which (while obvious now I think about it) caught me out.
Continue reading ‘Embed types in ActionScript and memory usage’
Yesterday, Amy posted this on Facebook:
Amy Dutronc wishes that iPlayer worked properly. It’s like listening to the radio and watching a really boring slideshow.
It soon turned out that lots of other people were having the same problem. They all have good Internet connections, so that wasn’t the issue- actually, even when bandwidth is low, iPlayer has some amazing built-in logic for detecting this and respondng accordingly. The issue is that some of the high-quality video now available on iPlayer requires lot of decoding power, and some computers – especially older ones and Apple Macs – aren’t up to the job. (NB. I believe there are improvements in the pipeline which will help iPlayer to improve playback even on slow machines – but if you’re still unable to get decent quality playback, the tips below may help).
Continue reading ‘Some iPlayer performance tips’
A while ago, Theo Simpson interviewed me about my photography, for a project he was doing. I just stumbled upon the interview, while cleaning up my hard disk, so here it is:
Continue reading ‘My Life in Photography’
A few weeks ago, Cherry Red Promotions very kindly asked me to play my Desert Island Discs at their monthly Desert Island Disco at The Shakespeare in Sheffield. Here are the tracks I picked, in the order in which I played ‘em. Lizzie also produced a little booklet, handed out on the night, and the following descriptions appeared in it:
Continue reading ‘Desert Island Disco’
Her voice, singing,
Baked in a land of brown, black and purple.
Light, milk coffee clouds;
Dark, cook chocolate shadows;
Sparkle Stabs of Sugared Violet.
Ohne Zucker Bitte.
Kein Kandis.
A meme’s been doing the rounds on Facebook. Instructions are as follows:
Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
I did that… but then wanted to offer more explanation of why these books are so special to me, and why you should probably read them as well. And so, I spent far too long writing up 16 potted book-reviews (After posting the original 15, I remembered one other which absolutely had to be on the list). Here they are (in no particular order), complete with links to Amazon via my associate account, so that you can buy them and earn me a few coppers if you like the sound of any of the books here (if anyone knows of a good alternative to Amazon for a very low-volume affiliate account, please let me know).
Continue reading ‘Books that Changed My Life’
To celebrate Ada Lovelace day, and the importance of women in technology, I’d like to introduce you to Sue Schofield. Sue is a journalist and author who was writing about hooking computers up to telephone lines when I was still in short trousers. You could, perhaps, call her the mother of the UK Internet (in fact, I just did).
Continue reading ‘Sue Schofield’
A few weeks ago I went to the Photographers’ Gallery for a lecture by the Dutch photographer Hans Aarsman. I’d never heard of Aarsman before, but the description piqued my interest, particularly the line "if, and how, artistic ambitions, aesthetics and useful photography can coincide". I’m so glad I went! Aarsman described his journey through photography, and I found strong echoes with my own feelings and development as a photographer.
Continue reading ‘Hans Aarsman’
A while ago, I signed up to review site Qype, but it was only last week that I really started using it. So it was a really nice surprise when today I got their weekly email newsletter (which, I have to admit, I normally kinda ignore) and saw that I’d been made Qyper of the week.
Here’s what they had to say about me:
Continue reading ‘I’m Qyper of the week!’
Last night, I was reminiscing with a BBC colleague about the UK micro-computer boom of the early 80s, and it struck me: like many programmers of my age, I cut my programming teeth on the BBC Micro (and also the ZX81). But unlike many, I got my BBC from the ITV.
BBC Micro
Continue reading ‘ITV gave me my BBC Micro’
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